Customers who were among the first to preorder the iPhone 5 from Apple have begun seeing updates that their orders are shipping from China.

While some iPhone 5 orders are now shipping, the packages are still not scheduled to be delivered until Friday, Sept. 21, which is the product's launch date.

One delivery update from UPS provided to AppleInsider shows that the shipment began its transit on Sunday, Sept. 16. The delivery is now on its way from ZhengZhou, China.

Orders at Apple's website are still listed as "preparing for shipment," but some have been able to track their package by using a reference number, such as a cell phone number tied to the order. By searching the reference number, it can be discovered that the product has in fact already shipped.

In years past, a handful of iPhone preorders have arrived earlier than the product launch date. However, almost all orders typically arrive on the advertised launch date.

Got my order confirmation email at 3:07am EDT - no order status update for me yet.

The order in which the updates go out may have more to do with where the order's being shipped to than when the order was placed - Apple may be timing the shipments to make sure the orders arrive on the 21st.

Mine is being delivered to NYC, so the total transit time for my order may be less for me than for someone more off the beaten path.

No email yet from Apple for me but if yours has shipped go to Ups.com and under "Track by Reference" and fill out date, your zip. Under "Shipment Reference" put in your phone number you have you attached to your Apple Store account. I checked mine and it shipped! Has the same arrival info, times, etc as the image in the story. Has Friday the 21st delivery as expected.

Someone explain me please, why things like iPhone can't be assembled on automated factories, here in the US. It's like in the "Campaign" movie, Apple could save a lot on shipment costs. :-)

Actually, the cost of labor in China is so low it's cheaper to assemble them by hand. Besides, most of the supply chain is located in Asia and the shipping costs would be much higher to ship some parts to the US and back. It's also faster this way.

Thanks. For some reason I thought Apple dealt with FedEx most of the time. The fact that UPS Worldwide Express has a 1 to 2 day transit to US...technically we could still see a handoff to FedEx. Not like it matters...just FedEx usually delivers earlier to my house. hah.

Thanks. For some reason I thought Apple dealt with FedEx most of the time. The fact that UPS Worldwide Express has a 1 to 2 day transit to US...technically we could still see a handoff to FedEx. Not like it matters...just FedEx usually delivers earlier to my house. hah.

For most orders with me, it is FedEx, but because of the heavy load, I think they contract with UPS and even DHL when needed.

Someone explain me please, why things like iPhone can't be assembled on automated factories, here in the US. It's like in the "Campaign" movie, Apple could save a lot on shipment costs. :-)

Because Chinese labor is a lot cheaper than maintenance on expensive assembly machines. Apple brings in up to $300 profit from each iPhone, but they rather put that money in their own pockets rather than to create jobs with a decent wage in the US or China.

It doesn't bother me that companies take jobs to China, what bothers me is why they do it. They do it to exploit them with bad wages and killer hours, not to give them jobs.

Faxon uses more than 500K people to assemble all Apple products, it is difficult for USA to get those many people working in a single facility, average monthly salary for them is less than $400[which is great compared to other factories in China], but $400 is less than a weekly salary in USA!! Shipping costs are less compared to these labor costs.

Now Faxon is trying to reduce labor by introducing robots into manufactoring, that time Apple might think to build something local. But still it need to import every component from China or other countries!!!

Someone explain me please, why things like iPhone can't be assembled on automated factories, here in the US. It's like in the "Campaign" movie, Apple could save a lot on shipment costs. :-)

Faxon uses more than 500K people to assemble all Apple products, it is difficult for USA to get those many people working in a single facility, average monthly salary for them is less than $400[which is great compared to other factories in China], but $400 is less than a weekly salary in USA!! Shipping costs are less compared to these labor costs.

Now Faxon is trying to reduce labor by introducing robots into manufactoring, that time Apple might think to build something local. But still it need to import every component from China or other countries!!!

Because Chinese labor is a lot cheaper than maintenance on expensive assembly machines. Apple brings in up to $300 profit from each iPhone, but they rather put that money in their own pockets rather than to create jobs with a decent wage in the US or China.

It doesn't bother me that companies take jobs to China, what bothers me is why they do it. They do it to exploit them with bad wages and killer hours, not to give them jobs.

A reason why I will never again buy an iPhone/iPad/Mac

LOL Well any other phone is made in Asia anyway? You not gonna use any technology not made in US? I guess you can buy that Google Q thing.

LOL Well any other phone is made in Asia anyway? You not gonna use any technology not made in US? I guess you can buy that Google Q thing.

I have a recollection that the Google G thing is assembled in the USA and some of the parts manufactured there but not all.

With reference to the answers above, I agree that some of the reasons that the process is not fully automated is that labour in China is cheaper and the rest of the supply chain is more local. I am guessing that there is another reason. To fully automate, one would need to build and program the robots necessary which is an enormously capital intensive task. this is not a problem if those machines are going to be used for enough times to pay for themselves but the manufacturing process for the 3 and the 4 were very different and it seems that the 4 and 5 are also using very different processes.

This could mean that machinery bought today for the current iPhone will be redundant by the time the next phone is due. Although it would be reasonable to assume that the 5s will be pretty similar in build to the 5 with updated internals if history is anything to go by.

In the end it would be preferable for Apple to use an automated assembly line from start to finish to avoid labour issues, potential criticism and to control the process even further but it seems that human labour is more flexible and better for certain tasks at this stage.

At 0.4 kg each it would cost about 30 cents each unit to ship from China to USA. But that 's a lot of planes needed: only 2500 iPhones per tonne means about 100,000 per airliner. Or 10 planeloads per million.